Zarouhie Abdalian and Joseph Rosenzweig: Transport Empty

Artists Zarouhie Abdalian (1982, New Orleans, LA) and Joseph Rosenzweig (1981, Pascagoula, MS) collaborate to create site specific sound installations and performances. Their projects combine an interest in the history of experimental music with an examination of the interplay between architecture and social encounters. 

Transport Empty (2017), a sound installation made specifically for MOCA’s Stair A, explores the state of wage labor in the global marketplace. The piece is comprised of a series of evocative field recordings, each made at a site where work is done for an hourly wage and paired with a matching period of silence. 

At each location — a commercial kitchen, a construction site, a machine shop — the sounds workers make reflect their specific activities to invoke familiar and yet unrecognizable scenes. These “aural shadows” excise specific moments from their context, reflecting the material conditions under which labor is performed.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website